THROUGH THE WINDOW: ANA MERCEDES HOYOS. A RETROSPECTIVE

The Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá (MAMBO) presents Through the Window: Ana Mercedes Hoyos. A Retrospective, the fourth solo exhibition of the artist at the museum. This ambitious exhibition offers an exhaustive historical and visual journey through the work of Ana Mercedes Hoyos (Bogotá, 1946-2014), one of the most versatile, influential, and innovative artists in Colombian and Latin American art. The robust selection of more than 100 works highlights constants from her abstract origins to her latest still lifes, emphasizing the evolution, creative richness, and ability of the artist to reinvent herself and make an impact on the contemporary art scene.

• Ana Mercedes Hoyos’ work ranges from abstract to figurative, moving between the two extremes of representation.
• The exhibition is structured chronologically, particularly highlighting the work produced between 1968 and 1984, during which she developed her personal imprint of pop, landscape, and abstraction. It also addresses the renowned Palenque series (1985-2014) from a renewed perspective.
• This exhibition is the second retrospective of the artist at MAMBO, in addition to being the most extensive and robust organized to date.
• Through her work, the artist explores themes such as windows, doors, still lifes, the Caribbean Sea, atmospheres, and landscapes, handling various levels of abstraction and figuration.
• The Atmospheres represent the highest degree of abstraction in her work, explicitly referring to the natural phenomenon that gives them their name. The Windows achieve the highest schematization, exemplifying her ability to merge abstraction and figuration.

Portrait of Ana Mercedes Hoyos
Photography by Olga Lucia Jordan

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill (Venezuela-UK, 1963) is an art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art specializing in Latin American art with a PhD in Art History from the University of Essex, England, and a Master’s degree in 20th Century Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, England. Fajardo-Hill has curated and written extensively on modern and contemporary Latin American art. She was the chief curator of the SPACE Collection and Abstraction in Action (Sayago & Pardon Collection) in Irvine, California, chief curator of the Museum of Latin American Art, MOLAA, Long Beach, California; director and chief curator of the Cisneros Fontanals Arts Foundation (CIFO) and the Ella Fontanals Cisneros Collection, Miami; and was director of the Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Venezuela. She co-curated Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Brooklyn Museum, NY, Pinacoteca, São Paulo, 2017-18. She is co-curator of the collective exhibition Xican-a.o.x. Body, organized by the American Federation of Arts, at The Cheech, Riverside, 2023, and Perez Art Museum, Miami, 2024. She is editor of Remains Tomorrow: Themes in Contemporary Latin American Abstraction, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, December 2022. She is currently an associate professor of museum studies and art history and director of the Northlight Gallery at Arizona State University.